Kala Seetharam Sridhar – författare

Despite the focus on urbanization as an important theme, the suburbanization of India has received relatively less attention. Indian Cities or Suburbs? is the first comprehensive work on suburbanization in India, exploring its complex dynamics in Indian cities. It addresses critical research questions regarding the suburbanization of individuals, households, and employment, examining regional variations, contributing factors, and resultant impacts. Utilizing granular data from the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL) at the sub-kilometre grid level for a hundred Indian cities, Kala demonstrates the applicability of the downward-sloping population density function to India's urban context. The findings reveal that as of 2015, India's population was predominantly suburban (82%) compared to urban (33%). Southern and urbanized states exhibit greater sprawl relative to the national average, whereas slow-growing states are more compact. Employment decentralization surpasses population suburbanization, with half of all jobs concentrated within a five-kilometre radius of the urban core. The book also underscores the negative environmental impacts of sprawl, including challenges in the provision of essential services such as water supply, healthcare, education, and air quality maintenance.

Urbanization in Asia

This book discusses rural interventions in India and Indonesia, as they influence urbanization and its problems and solutions; urban governance, infrastructure programs, service delivery reforms and their evaluation; and urbanization and the environment.

This book presents an innovative democratic framework that ensures public participation, based on applying principles of good governance to facilitate urban transport decision-making in an integrated and structured manner. While – given the need for mobility in cities – transport is crucial for urban development, problems such as the fragmentation of institutions, decision-making, and unequal knowledge concentrations represent major hurdles to effective governance outcomes (especially those that go beyond technical and regulatory aspects). Substantial investments continue to be pumped into the urban transportation sector, with cities lacking the necessary capacities or governance mechanisms to ensure optimal returns on these investments. The book introduces the transport governance framework, which is intended to provide an integrated and structured approach to facilitate decision-making processes in the urban transport sector, focusing on how decisions are made rather than what decisions are made. It also discusses the initial testing of the framework in several cities across India. In addition, it examines the application of the TAPC (transparency, accountability, participation, and capacity building) principles of good governance to key aspects of urban transport – policy, planning, standards, budgets, execution, and regulation.